Milner addressed some of those concerns (at least number 4) in his interview with the Atlantic. He mentions that we do not currently have even close to the technology needed to do this today. As he says, “[The $100 million is] to do extensive research into all of these challenges, and try to convince ourselves that this is possible in the lifetime of a single generation.”

Will the research pay off? Who knows. My bet is that we will figure out fusion before developing the necessary technology to use this laser method.

The data would travel back at the speed of light and Alpha Centauri is ~4.4 light-years away, so it would take ~4.4 years to get the data. It would probably take even longer due to compression, encryption, transfer rates, etc, but I do not know much about those.

Gravitational waves do not lose much energy while traversing through spacetime since they interact very weakly with matter. Thus, to generate opposing gravitational waves, we would need to create objects equally as massive -- for the LIGO event, it would require impossible amounts of energy (65 solar masses as a base, plus we would need to get them accelerating, etc.), not to mention, we would necessarily create black holes, which might cause some other complications for us...

It would take much (much, much, etc.) less energy to create some sort of hovering system for a car than to counteract gravtitational waves.

Gravitational waves travel at the speed of light, so we could not use this for superluminal communication.

Changes in mass/gravity are not instantly detectable. They were in Newton's theory, but this was not consistent with special relativity and this contradiction was the impetus behind Einstein seeking out a general theory of relativity.

Vegas' goal is to encourage an equal amount of betting on each side of the line. They take a cut regardless, so 50% of the money on each side of the line minimizes their risk and maximizes their expected value.

Many times, you will see a line "move," which is essentially Vegas updating their line due to market corrections so that Vegas always wins.

Unfortunately, the format was not different in 2011, but we got a rematch anyway. SEC bias helped keep Oklahoma State out of the championship game that year, just like it did to us in 2006 even though it wasn't officially a thing yet.

I cannot think of many scenarios in which pumping in music is better than the band. Bands are one of the things that make college football special, and pumping in music necessarily diminishes the band.

You can add "Let's Go Blue" to the list. It seems like dozens of schools copied us there too. A couple of band members wrote the notes back in the '70s and now you hear it all over the place, most recently at Virginia Tech on Monday.

I remember when Purdue's band played this during the 2012 game in West Lafayette, and they only played it once since the away section's "Let's Go Blue!" drowned out the home fans saying "Go Purdue."

I use an aggregrate ranking system which uses the following respectable polls: ARWU, QS, and Times Higher Education. I do not use US World News and Report due to the well-known slew of problems and biases in that poll. Michigan finished #14 in the US and #19 in the world using my method. Here are the 2015 results for the Big Ten (dashed lines split up tiers):

One does not need a PhD (or even a degree) to do research and publish in a journal. As long as the research is good enough, it will be published.

Obviously a PhD would help quite a deal since it would build the necessary skills to perform quality research. Researching and publishing without a PhD is certainly rare, but one great exception is the physicist Freeman Dyson.

"All the University of Michigan students arrested Monday night are at liberty. Fifteen of them had to furnish $1,000 bail each...Three students pleaded guilty to a charge of loitering and were fined $4.65 each. The fifteen, for whom bail was furnished by Ann Arbor businessmen, will be given a hearing on Friday."

According to various inflation calculators online, the bail would be roughly $25,000 in today's money, which seems a little steep to me. It looks like they were (literally) bailed out by some local businessmen. The $4.65 fines equate to ~$115, which sounds like a reasonable penalty.

I mean, that would make him an expert on the topic. I think it is more damning that an Alabama fan wrote about how Ohio State's recent practices of forcing transfers, medical hardshipping, etc. are so bad.

Why not enforce both punishments? Arguably the main reason the whole thing was covered up was to protect the football program. The cover up indirectly led to success on the football field (no PR issues, no negative effect on recruiting, etc.), so why not punish the football program as well?

Greg Jackson is a common name. There are two others listed in the directory (a medical student and an alumnus), but gregjack has no information. That makes me think this Greg Jackson was recently added to the directory, which may turn out to be good news for us!

Unfortunately, due to the new schedule, we will have to play MSU and OSU on the road in even years. It is going to be exceptionally difficult to win both of those games, especially the latter, and make it into the playoff. I think we'll have a good 2015 (9-10 wins), better 2016 (10-11 wins), and then make the playoff in 2017.

Yes, but Brown is in the bottom tier of the Ivy League, along with Dartmouth. Many Big Ten schools are better than these two as far as research goes (e.g., Michigan, Northwestern, Wisconsin, and Illinois). I could see him leaving for one of the mid-tier Ivies like Cornell or Penn to avoid the athletics conflict.

"[Gandalf] was sent by a mere prudent plan of the angelic Valar or governors; but Authority had taken up this plan and enlarged it, at the moment of its failure. 'Naked I was sent back - for a brief time, until my task is done'. Sent back by whom, and whence? Not by the 'gods' whose business is only with this embodied world and its time; for he passed 'out of thought and time'." (p. 203)

As Tolkien said in this letter, Gandalf was not sent back by "the gods" (e.g., Manwe as you suggested), rather "Authority" intervened since the Valar's plan failed. Tolkien refers to Eru as "Authority" in other letters (e.g., "Authority" is listed under "Eru" in the index), so it is clear that it was Eru who was responsible for reviving Gandalf.

Don't count out Northwestern. Fitzgerald will be there for a long time and has been coaching and recruiting at levels unseen at Northwestern. They will be competitive in the West year in and year out. Nebraska will also be competitive as always (especially if they hire a better coach).

This is one of the reasons many of the BCS computers don't start running their algorithms until midseason--there isn't enough relevant data. I believe the Football Outsiders predicted doom and gloom for us, but that was based on pre-season data, which is a horrible data set to analyze for predictive purposes. Now that we are midway through the season, the data set is much, much better (but still not great due to the small sample size), and we should trust them a little more now.

If you include grad schools, Michigan is in the top 15 in the world. If you just look at undergrad, Michigan is a top 30 school in the country. Either way, Michigan is considered a smart school by many. They aren't private though, so they aren't included with "smart" schools like Stanford, Duke, and Vanderbilt.

It's difficult to put up points when we turn the ball over 4-5 times in a game. As long as we regress in the turnover department (which we should), we will stop scoring in the 20s against bad defenses.

Which guy should I trust? The guy who watched the game live who provides merely anecdotal evidence...or the guy who watched the game live, then watched every play in slow motion multiple times, and then wrote up a detailed explanation of each play? Hmm.

I would not be surprised to see Lewan-Bryant-Glasgow-Kalis-Schofield start against Minnesota after the bye week. At this point, I think I would be more surprised if Miller was still the starter in October.

Lots of positives to take away from this game. It's a good thing T. Gordon will be replacing Furman against Notre Dame since Furman seemed to be our biggest weakness. It's scary to imagine how good this defense will be next year (and the year after, and the year after...).

I could see North Dakota State beating Kansas State in a huge upset. NDSU is coming off back-to-back FCS National Championships while Kansas State lost their Heisman-contending quarterback and should regress quite a bit this year. The only thing going for them is that Bill Snyder is a wizard dressed as a human.

You are likely going to have to wait awhile. Michigan and Ohio State will be able to compete with the top SEC teams soon, but the rest of the Big Ten is not going to be so good. The rest of the Big Ten is just not recruiting like even bottom-of-the-pack SEC teams.

9/10 at Virginia Tech (although this is supposedly being pushed back to another year per Twitter)

9/17 TBA/Bye

9/24 TBA/Bye

10/1 at Michigan

10/8 at Michigan State

10/15 Ohio State

10/22 at Iowa

10/29 Nebraska

11/5 Northwestern

11/12 Illinois

11/19 at Purdue

11/26 Minnesota

If Virginia Tech stays on the schedule, that will be a brutal OOC schedule combined with a brutal conference schedule: at Michigan, at Michigan State, Ohio State for the crossovers immediately followed by a string of at Iowa, Nebraska, Northwestern. Good luck Wisconsin! For your sake, I hope you're still good in a few years.